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Tangents

Ulorin Vex in red (photo session 2)

April 26, 2011

Ulorin Vex was one of the two models that we used in the recent workshops in San Francisco. Having seen Ulorin Vex’s personal site and portfolio on Model Mayhem, I jumped at the chance of working with her again with a photo session the day after the workshops. Working with a model as professional and striking-looking as Ulorin, was an experience. We shot several sequences with different looks and backdrops and lighting, and I’ll share more of these over the course of the next few days.

The photographs shown in this article was from a sequence we did in the passage outside my hotel room. The lighting was surprisingly simple, but I had to improvise with the limited space we had …

But before we get to the specific set-up for lighting here, a few comments:
Interestingly enough, the two photos shown above had exactly the same lighting. And this brings us to a key concept with light. This idea is true whether you use available light or off-camera flash … or even when you control the direction of your bounce flash.

off-camera flash – change the light by changing your own position

With those two photos, Ulorin remained in the same spot. But she did change her pose towards the camera as I moved. Why the light is so dramatically different, is that *I* changed my position … and that in turn, changed the direction of light entirely.

It seems obvious stated like that, but I think this idea is something that really is brought home again when two images can look so different. And all that changed was the photographer’s position.

I loved the way the light glared off the wall-paper here, creating an effect that looks somewhat like ring-flash. For these images, I tried to position myself so that the glare spot was directly behind her, giving that kind of halo.

Using the shadowed area behind her as negative space in this composition. I like the balance of it.

Here is the lighting set-up that I used. A single speedlight bounced into the exit stairwell on that floor. Since I had no room to set up the light or especially a softbox, I had to find this spot and prop the door open with my camera bag. I bounced my flash into the left of that area, behind the wall and out of Ulorin’s line-of-sight. I wanted to make the light streaming through that doorway as diffuse as possible, and minimize the chance of hot-spots.

The speedlight was controlled via a PocketWizard FlexTT5 on which the flash was mounted. The output of this flash could be controlled as manual flash via the FlexTT5 and AC3 ZoneController on the camera. Very simple.

Camera settings:
Apertures were either f4.0 or f5.0 @ 400 ISO @ shutter speeds around 1/80
I kept the flash to the same output, but had to change my aperture, depending on my position. The aperture for the ‘direct flash’ shots was f5 and the other images were all shot at f4.0

Hopefully this article will inspire the idea that you don’t need complex lighting to get striking results. The setting or place where you photograph can be quite simple. In this case, the place was the hotel corridor right outside my hotel room. The lighting needs to complement the idea behind the photographs. Then you just need an exceptional model …

other articles on Tangents, featuring Ulorin:

model – Ulorin Vex
Ulorin Vex – window light (photo session 3)
Ulorin Vex – Monaco foyer (photo session 4)
manual off-camera fill-flash  (model – Ulorin)

Equipment used with this photo session:

Nikon D3;  Nikon 24-70mm f2.8 AF-S (B&H)
Nikon SB-900 (B&H);  Nikon SD-9 battery pack (B&H)
(2x) PocketWizard FlexTT5 transceiver (B&H)
PocketWizard AC3 Zone Controller (B&H)
Manfrotto 1051BAC light-stand (B&H)

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Stay informed of new articles via the monthly newsletter.
Also join us on the Tangents forum for further discussions.

If you need more direct help or instruction on flash photography,
I do present workshops & seminars and also offer individual tutoring sessions.

If you find these articles interesting and of value, then you can help by
using these affiliate links to order equipment & other goodies. Thank you!
 

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